Five Mindfulness Trainings Study Group

Sat, November 18

Sat, November 1810:00 am– 12:30 pm

Sat, December 210:00 am– 12:30 pm

Sat, December 1610:00 am– 12:30 pm

Sat, November 18, 10:00 am – Sat, November 18, 12:30 pm

A Five Mindfulness Trainings Study Group

Meeting November 18, December 2, and December 16 from 10:00 am to 12:30 pm near Takoma Metro.

In the various Buddhist traditions, lay people follow a basic code of ethics known as the five precepts. The precepts encourage the practitioner to abstain from five ways of acting that create suffering for the practitioner and others: killing, stealing, engaging in sex with inappropriate partners, lying, and using alcohol and other intoxicants. In deciding to abide by them, the practitioner essentially says: “These practices are the best place for me to develop as a human being. They represent wholesome teachings for me by which I aspire to live.”

In the Plum Village tradition, Thich Nhat Hanh has reformulated the precepts for our challenging modern lifestyles in the form of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. They represent the guardrails on the path of mindfulness that are designed to preserve and encourage our mindfulness practice. In early January 2018, there will be a transmission ceremony where we can commit, both to ourselves and to our community, to study, learn from, and practice the Trainings.

A study group will meet three times this fall to both prepare for the January transmission ceremony and to deepen our understanding of the Five Mindfulness Trainings and their relation to mindfulness. You do not need to expect to participate in the transmission ceremony to join the study group: studying the Trainings has its own independent benefits as we examine how our live choices relate to our mindfulness practice and vice versa. During the study group, we will look deeply at each of the Trainings to see what resonates with us or what gives us pause. We will also discuss what it means to commit to study and practice the Trainings as opposed to taking them as inviolable commandments.

You are welcome to join us for these three sessions to explore the Trainings more deeply. The sessions will be facilitated Dharma discussions about the Trainings. The study group is free of charge and open to the public, but registration and a commitment to try to attend all three sessions are requested. In addition, donations to the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center to help support our mindfulness community would be appreciated. Please register here or use the button below.